Managerial and firm influences on export behavior

Export researchers have generally interpreted small enterprise export behavior as either being exclusively dependent on firm factors or specific characteristics of decision-makers. These approaches are inadequate for explaining what is obvious managerial activity resulting from strategic choices among alternate foreign market expansion paths for the firm. This study empirically examines the interaction of decision maker and firm factors on intended export behaviors among eighty-nine Canadian manufacturing firms and finds that they explain a significant and substantive part of the variance in export entry behavior, but have limited success in accounting for variances in export performance. The author acknowledges assistance from the American Marketing Association doctoral dissertation grant (1979) and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business Fellowship Award (1979) for funding the study from which this data was drawn.